Business Continuity Planning

PROACTIVELY PLAN YOUR RESPONSE TO A CRISIS  

Many businesses don’t invest in crisis management because, in their reasoning, there is almost zero chance that an ordinary business will ever suffer any of the losses as the result of a crises. Well, that school of thought has been ruthlessly tested by the coronavirus pandemic. To keep your manufacturing firm doing business you need to establish a crisis management plan

CRITICAL STEPS TO BUILD YOUR CRISIS MANAGEMENT PLAN: 

  • Perform a risk assessment—When creating a plan, it’s important to assess risks specific to your business. During your risk assessment, work with your organization’s leadership team and other key stakeholders to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities. Such threats can include public relations issues or product recalls.
  • Determine the business impact of common risks—After you’ve performed a risk assessment, it’s important to understand how any threats could impact your business. To accomplish this, consider conducting a business impact analysis (BIA). BIAs can help you identify the operational and financial impact of a crisis, whether it be lost sales, increased expenses or regulatory fines. By predicating the consequences of a threat, your businesses will be able to focus its recovery efforts more effectively.
  • Identify potential responses—Once you’ve identified your business’s unique risks and their potential impact, you can then evaluate how you will respond to each threat. When planning your responses to individual crises, think critically about the resources you will need to resolve each issue. For example, responding to a product recall may require a response team, a recall plan, an internal product recall team and legal counsel.

These initial steps are critical as you build your own crisis management plan and must be well documented to promote employee training and education. Also, review crisis management plans on a regular basis to account for any organizational changes or new threats.

In addition to having a plan in place, the right insurance policy can help mitigate the damage of a crisis. Questions about insurance coverage – Office of Insurance Coverage, Washington State

Download A Crisis/Business Continuity Planning Template Here

ADDITIONAL PLANNING RESOURCES